Song of the Soul

 

 

How do we listen for the soul’s calling?  What do we hear when the soul speaks?  How will we know if it is the soul speaking to us and not the ego or the voice of an old wounded place?  In thinking about these questions, I made of list of things I have done in my life that felt like they came from the soul’s urging.  Here is what they had in common.  I felt moved to do something that I did not necessarily want to do.  The call came from a place deep in my heart and abdomen not from my thoughts or mind. There was little calculation about whether this was a good idea or a bad one, the choice was not made from such a calculation.  It didn’t feel like a choice. The movement of action was towards uncertainty.  In some cases, there was a big change made suddenly.  In others, small changes made over a long period of time.  In the end, it didn’t matter.  Any effort made in devoted and honest service to the soul was met half-way with what was needed to be manifested. 

 

Things did not go as planned, involved much more effort and surrender than I could have ever anticipated.  The path did not lead to where I had expected.  Objectively, there were large and small failures, shame at how badly things sometimes fell apart, the constant companion of anxiety and fear.  Subjectively, the energy moving me towards something different and new coalesced into a momentum beyond willpower.  My heart grew larger because of the undertaking.  I grew in ways that would not have been possible had I chosen the calculated and already planned-out route.  

 

Life loses its meaning when we settle for only what the ego wants, what our families expect from us, what the culture dictates is reasonable.  It can feel easier to go along than to try to change.  But the cost is a half-lived life.   When we become deaf to the inner urges calling us into a larger life, addiction, (dis)ease, disengagement and depression can set in.  We need to figure this out ourselves, how to live bigger lives.  The map does not exist until we create it.